In The Presence Of Another World
by BlueNeutrino
Summary: Before the events of The End Of Time, another race were plotting the destruction of the Time Lords, a race the Time Lords themselves considered to be nothing more than a myth. But they are real, and what they are planning spells danger for the Doctor. Inspired by the Blue Öyster Cult concept album "Imaginos".
1. On A Bay Of Dreams

_**In The Presence Of Another World**_

**Full Summary: Before the events of **_**The End Of Time, **_**another race were plotting the destruction of the Time Lords, intent upon erasing them from all of time and space in every universe possible. Les Invisibles: a race that exists beyond the limitations of time, considered by the Time Lords themselves to be nothing more than a myth; a bedtime story for the Childeren of the Damned. But they are real, and their agent in Earth's history is setting into motion events that spell danger for both the Doctor and his duplicate in another world.**

**Extended A/N (please read for explanation of background to the story): I suppose this could be described as a crossover fic of sorts, but it's a bit difficult to apply that term when the thing I've crossed over DW with isn't much more than just a concept. It might be more accurate to say I've drawn heavily on the concept of the myth of Imaginos, which was thought up by Sandy Pearlman (a producer for the band **Blue Öyster Cult**) and was subsequently used as the basis for a concept album by that band in 1988.**

**If you aren't familiar with the album _Imaginos _or the story behind it (which you probably aren't as it is very obscure) then this fic might mean less to you than if you knew enough to spot all the lyrics and song references I've incorporated into this, but even so I'm going to try to do my best to make sure you can understand it anyway. There are a lot of different interpretations of the story of _Imaginos, _mostly because the version offered by the concept album is rather vague and confusing due to it being incomplete, but I'm going to try and explain my interpretation of it as fully as possible and how I've linked it in to the world of Doctor Who. **

**Listening to the album, I think there are many aspects of it that tie in very well with the history of Gallifrey and the Time Lords, and I think that the character Imaginos himself has a lot of parallels with the Doctor (eg. a time traveller who changes faces, can cheat death and (possibly) has a granddaughter named Susan (or Susie?)). Some of the odd lyrics in the album also seem to be able to link in with the history of the Time Lords, and I think in many ways Les Invisibles are like a malevolent version of the Time Lords.**

**I wanted to write this because I think there are so many ways to make the two worlds fit together which I wanted to explore, and although this story will quite probably seem to make no sense if you aren't familiar with _Imaginos_, I hope I can do my best to explain it. If any of you are interested, I'd definitely recommend listening to the album and reading some of the commentaries on it on the internet if you'd like to understand it a bit more. And aside from the weird storyline behind it, there's some great pieces of music on the album as well. If you like avant-garde hard rock, then I think you'll like **Blue Öyster Cult**.  
><strong>

**Disclaimer: The characters and concepts are all the property of the incredible Sandy Pearlman and the genii that created Doctor Who.**

_**Prologue – On A Bay Of Dreams**_

The Doctor stood on the shore, looking out along the vast beach for any sign of the man that had brought him here. His single heart was beating quickly as his sense of unease continued to grow. Maybe he shouldn't have come here. Or at the very least he should have told Rose where he was going. The man may not have specifically forbidden him from telling anybody about their agreed meeting, but there had been an underlying sense of secrecy in the psychic message that suggested he wanted nobody but the Doctor to know. And for some reason the Doctor had agreed to it. Maybe it was because of how novel he'd found it, being contacted via the telepathic matrix. Having spent so long getting used to being part human he'd found that reminder of his Time Lord nature exhilarating. It had thrilled him enough to provoke this kind of reckless action in coming here alone. Despite sensing an inherent danger about the situation, he felt a burning to need to find out just who it was who had contacted him.

He'd been stood on the bay for fifteen minutes before he heard someone speak softly from behind him, and taken slightly by surprise he turned to look in the opposite direction to the one he'd been facing. He was somewhat intrigued by the appearance of the man standing just a few metres away. The man was roughly the same apparent age and height as the Doctor but he was very strangely attired; wearing a white long-tailed suit with a black waistcoat and silver tie, and on his head was a white top hat that just showed the ends of his auburn hair curling under his ears. In his left hand he held an unusually shaped cane: at the top was a silver hook with a crossbar just underneath it, but the man didn't seem to be using it as a means to support himself; it appeared to be purely decorative. As the Doctor cast his gaze over him he felt a strange sense of familiarity, as if he'd seen the man somewhere before, but he could quite place where. Unusual, as Time Lords usually had excellent memories, and particularly so when it came to men as peculiar as this, but even so the Doctor found he couldn't remember him. It had briefly crossed his mind that the man might in fact be another Time Lord, but during their psychic exchange the Doctor hadn't sensed anything from the man that suggested that might be the case. Although there definitely seemed to be something both intriguing and dangerous about him, it was difficult to really specify exactly _what. _

The man was smiling as he addressed the Doctor. "I'm glad you came, Doctor."

The Doctor gave him a slightly wary nod. "Good, does that mean you're going to tell me why I'm here? Or who you are, for that matter?"

The man just continued to smile and responded calmly. "I'm the Captain."

"Captain what?" The Doctor tried to prompt him to give his full name.

"Just 'the Captain'."

Curious. He even followed in the Time Lords' fashion of referring to themselves by titles, but yet the one thing the Doctor was certain about was that this man wasn't a Time Lord. "Only a title? Ok, well I've got one of those too, but you knew that already. I think the question is _how _you knew that and _why _you're here."

"The Loa sent me," the Captain replied, and his answer took the Doctor somewhat by surprise. Could he really mean what the Doctor thought he meant?

"The Loa?"

"Yes. What some of your people believe to be the Vortex. The Nexus of the crisis."

And this man knew about Time Lord history. Well, 'history' was a crude term for it, but the Captain seemed to know things about Time Lords that only Time Lords should know. The Doctor was growing both more intrigued and more disconcerted. "Interesting. For you to know something like that I might have thought you were a Time Lord, except you used the phrase 'your people'. What does that make you?"

"Just a visitor," the Captain said with a slight smirk.

What was that supposed to mean? "You still haven't really told me what you've brought me here for."

"To share with you some starry wisdom," the Captain replied as cryptically and as calmly as ever, "And to extend an invitation to you."

"An invitation to what?"

"To the party of astrologers. It takes place at the height of Christmas Tide, in the house just down the shore from here," said the Captain, pointing past him. The Doctor glanced behind him to look, but he couldn't see anything beyond the bluff that enclosed the bay. "That's seven days from now," the Captain continued, "And I expect to see you there."

"But why?" the Doctor asked, more confused than ever. He was used to being able to make sense of just about situation he found himself in, but this whole thing felt like a highly perplexing dream.

"Because of the things I know about you. I know you have thirteen faces. Thirteen fancy dreams of which you've almost run out."

That sounded like a reference to his regenerations, but the Doctor couldn't be sure. Why did this man speak in riddles? "I honestly don't know what you mean by that."

Again, the Captain smirked. "Oh, I think you'd know enough."

The Doctor was getting more confused than ever. "Know enough about what? What do you know about me?"

The man was still smiling, but there seemed to be an underlying menace in the outwardly pleasant expression. "I know of your Star of Rassilon, that was no star but a Magna of Illusion."

So now he was speaking in rhymes? The Doctor couldn't understand any of it. This sense of being completely baffled and perplexed was so unfamiliar to him and he didn't like it.

The Captain continued to talk as the Doctor stared at him in confusion. "And I know that this is just the place to hopelessly encounter Time," he said, gesturing round at the bay around him. "And the world that mirrors it. Or perhaps not you alone, for the other one's a duplicate."

_But I'm a duplicate. Does he know about...? I don't understand. _"What…?"

"And I know of the Eye of Harmony and its obscured sight, for though it does not flux the queenly flux is eternal light."

"Wait, why does everything you say have to rhyme?" the Doctor asked, not even sure which questions he should be asking to get the kind of explanation he wanted.

The Captain smirked. "Because it's rhymed like the real, and real as the rhyme. Invented by those with the instruments of Time."

The Doctor just stared at him in confusion. "What does that even mean?"

"If you want the wisdom known to me," the Captain said, still wearing that enigmatic smile, "Then at that party is where you'll be."

"But…" For once the Doctor was truly lost for words. "What exactly is going on? What do you want with me? Who are you?"

The Captain just continued to smile. "I am the one who'd never lie," he said, before turning away from the Doctor and beginning to walk back along the shore.

"Wait!" the Doctor called out after him, but just as he did so he thought he heard the sound of something out to sea: a kind of chattering, like a cacophony of voices all muttering something in unison. He turned to glanced out towards the ocean for a second, but seeing nothing out of place he then looked back to where the Captain had been headed, only to find that the man had vanished seemingly into thin air.

He blinked a few times to make sure he hadn't been dreaming, and wasn't at all surprised when the image of the bay surrounding him faded into black and was replaced with the image of the ceiling as he woke up to find himself lying in bed. Despite having confirmed that he'd dreamt the whole thing, that still didn't do much to quell the feeling of intrigue and unease that had now lodged itself in the back of his mind.

**A/N: That probably made no sense. I've made references to some of the most obscure BÖC songs in existence, including an unreleased demo from an out of circulation album that first came out in 1988. If you would like to make sense of this a bit more, look up the details of the lyrics to the songs The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria, The Girl That Love Made Blind, Astronomy, Magna Of Illusion, Les Invisibles, I Am The One You Warned Me Of, Del Rio's Song and In The Presence Of Another World. **

**The Captain's appearance is inspired by the video for the Astronomy promo and the song Dance On Stilts.  
><strong>

**Please do keep reading because I promise I will explain things more in future chapters (and reviews would be nice too!)  
><strong>


	2. Del Rio's Song

_**Chapter One – Del Rio's Song**_

River Song was asleep when the knocks sounded on the door of her cell, but being part Gallifreyan she never slept very deeply or for very long. She was already awake and alert when the door began to open, perched on the end of her bed with a mischievous smile for whoever it was who was about to enter. She knew she didn't have any choice as to whether she answered the door or not – the knocks had only been a courtesy to let her know someone was about to walk in, but she didn't really need them to let her know to be ready. She was always ready. Ready to take any opportunity to escape that presented itself, and River wondered if this might be one.

As the door swung fully open and a man walked in River raised an eyebrow at him, her devious smile still fixed firmly in place. "What's this?" she said teasingly, "A visitor? They don't normally let me have many of those. You must be really special."

He returned her grin with one that was equally mischievous. "You could say that," he said, gesturing to the armed guards standing in the corridor to shut the door so that he and River were alone in the cell.

River waited patiently for one of the guards to close the door, and then turned her attention back to the visitor. "And _they _listen to you too," she said, still in a tone that was slightly mocking, "Oh, you must be special indeed to get to order prison guards around. So who are you? My new jailer?"

"I'm the Captain," he said enigmatically.

She looked him up and down with a slightly amused expression on her face. "And is that your uniform? Because if so, then the military really have lost the plot." He certainly didn't look like a captain of anything, not with the white suit and silver tie he was wearing and the strangely shaped cane that he carried.

He winked at her. "Just between you and me, I don't have a uniform."

"Pity," she said with a smirk, "Because I think you would look quite marvellous in one."

His grin widened even further. He seemed to like her flirtatious attitude. "So, this is what my friends all mean by River Song?" he said, looking at her with an expression that seemed both amused and impressed.

"Well, I don't know what your friends have told you, Captain," she replied as confidently as ever, "But I'd like to point out that actually it's _Doctor _River Song."

"Oh, but I can see through the charms of doctors," he said in response, and River wondered what he meant by that. "Including yours."

Ah yes, _her _Doctor. River supposed she ought to have known he was involved in this somehow – this man seemed like just the kind of eccentric the Doctor would love to associate with. "Was it him who sent you?"

"Not yet," the Captain replied, "But you know what it's like. Things never happen in the right order."

River cocked her head slightly as she tried to take a guess at what was going on, but she couldn't think of anything yet. "No, that's true. So what are you doing here?"

"Well," he said, still giving her that deviously enigmatic grin, "I was wondering if perhaps you'd like me to tell you a way to get out of here?"

"Oh, is that all?" River replied, sounding melodramatically disappointed, "But I get out of here _all _the time. If you were to tell me how to do it that would take away all the fun of working it out for myself."

He was still smiling. "Yes, but this particular time is more important than ever, Rio."

She frowned at him. "Did you just call me Rio? My name is River."

The Captain just shrugged. "No, it's not. It's a translation, and I can translate it into Portuguese if I like."

River had to admit she was a little confused by that. So did he know who she was then? How much had the Doctor told him? He seemed to know why she used the name River Song, but she couldn't for the life of her think why he'd want to translate it into Portuguese. "Well, I'd prefer it if you called me River," she said in a tone that most people wouldn't have been brave enough to question, but the Captain just smirked.

"And I'd prefer it if I called you Rio."

She glared at him. "Well, do _you _have a proper name, Captain? What should I call you?"

"Just call me Desdinova," he said, flashing her a grin.

River folded her arms in a gesture of annoyance. "That means 'Eternal Light' in English, I believe. Should I start calling you that?"

He shrugged again. "If you like."

River sighed, realising she'd lost that argument, and started to tap her foot impatiently. "Alright then, Captain Desdinova, so why don't we get to the reason you're here and you tell me why it's so important I have to escape?"

The next word to leave his mouth seemed to be said with relish. "Spoilers."

"Oh, but you can't…" she said, frustrated that he'd been able to use her own favourite word against her, but she knew he wasn't going to explain anything any further. "Very well, so if you can't tell me the why then at least tell me how."

He was still smiling. "First of all, Rio, you have to listen."

She just looked at him in confusion. "To what?"

"Just listen."

River went silent for a moment and tried to work out what it was she was supposed to be able to hear, but there was no noise inside the cell. "What exactly…"

"It's the rhyme of the star clock," he said suddenly, "Can't you hear it?"

At first River couldn't hear anything and she was about to tell him that, but then she thought she could make out a sound: a steady ticking coming from somewhere. But where? There was no clock in the cell and the noise seemed to be coming from all around. Now she was completely confused, and also a little unnerved. "But how…where is it…"

He cut her off as he continued to explain, his smile now gone and his expression serious. "You have to wait until the clock strikes twelve," he said, with a definite sense of urgency in his voice. "And then you'll find four doors. He'll knock four times, once on each door, and it's up to you to open it. Two of the doors are locked, one of them's left to take you in, but the other one just mirrors it."

None of this was making any sense to River. "What's any of that supposed to mean?"

He ignored her question and carried on. "The mirror door is a duplicate of the first, and leads to regeneration."

"I know I'm part Time Lord, Captain," River said, sounding perplexed, "But right now I really don't need to regenerate."

"Not you, but him," the Captain responded, "This _has _to happen. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

River just stared at him. "Honestly Captain? No."

He just gave her a mysterious smile. "But you will."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "If this really is as important as you say, I certainly hope so."

"Oh, it is," he said, crossing back to the door and knocking on it for a prison guard to let him out. As the door opened he glanced back at her. "But one thing first though, Rio."

"What?" she asked, still trying to make sense of what he'd just told her, but then she met his gaze and found she was no longer able to make sense of anything. She hadn't really noticed it before, but there was something strange about his eyes: they were a deep black, but the very outer edges of his irises were ringed with green. They reminded her of Saturn's rings, not least because of their hypnotic quality.

He smiled at her. "Go back to sleep."

River blinked a few times, wondering what that meant and why the room seemed to be fading into blackness, but then she opened her eyes again and found herself lying in bed. The cell was silent: there was no clock ticking, nobody knocking at the door, and she was completely on her own.

**A/N: Probably made no sense again, but please stick with me! I'd really appreciate it if people reviewed and told me exactly which aspects of this story they want explaining most so I know what to focus on most in future, because the story of Imaginos is pretty complicated. I do however think it fits in really well with Doctor Who. It's completely by chance that there is a character in Doctor Who called River Song, and the song by BÖC called Del Rio's Song translates to 'River's Song', but that isn't the only connection between them. I also thought the four knocks/four doors thing worked quite well, as well as 'the light that never warms' being quite a good description of Time Lord regeneration. I really hope I'm not confusing anybody too much with this, and if I am then I'm going to try and explain things more soon.**

**Songs referenced this chapter: Del Rio's Song, Workshop Of The Telescopes, I Am The One You Warned Me Of, Astronomy.**


	3. Earthly Things Be Done

**Thank you very much to ellynlvx777 for your comments! You've really spurred me on to keep writing this. There's not much more Imaginos stuff in this chapter as I'm trying to establish what's happened in the DW universe a bit more, but I have something planned with Les Invisibles next time round.**

**The events in this chapter take place parallel to part one of the DW episode **_**The End Of Time, **_**and the next couple of chapters lead up to the Tenth Doctor's regeneration. After that there's going to be a lot more Eleven in this.**

**And btw, bananas and milk are an awesome thing to have for breakfast!**** I recommend trying it :P**_**  
><strong>_

_**Chapter Two – Earthly Things Be Done**_

It was a cold December morning and Rose and the Doctor were eating breakfast in the kitchen of their London flat. After the half-human Doctor had come through to their world Rose had wanted a bit more privacy for her and the Doctor away from the rest of her family, and so the pair of them had moved out of Pete's mansion to this apartment overlooking the Thames. It wasn't huge, but it suited them both just fine. They'd been able to find a larger flat for the same price on the other side of the river, but the view from that angle looked out on Canary Wharf, and they'd both preferred to not be reminded of that.

This morning Rose was making tea as she stared out of the window at the zeppelins in the sky, whereas the Doctor was sat at the kitchen table eating a bowl of sliced bananas and milk for breakfast. Despite being half human now, he still had his love for bananas. Rose was chatting to him as she waited for the kettle to boil. "I was thinking I might go and get Tony's present later," she was saying, "I know I've left it a bit late, but I've been thinking about this for ages and I've still got no idea what I should get."

The Doctor swallowed a mouthful of banana and looked thoughtful for a second. "Well, he's a toddler, isn't he? Why don't you get him one of those plastic toys that lights up and makes noises when you press buttons on it or something? Toddlers love that kind of thing."

Rose shook her head with a smile as the kettle finally finished boiling. "No, I don't want to get him just any old kids' toy. Dad's already bought him hundreds of the best toys around and I don't just want to get another one like that. This is his first Christmas when his big sister isn't living with him any more, and I want to get him something really special. You know, to show I haven't abandoned him just because I'm living with you now."

The Doctor chewed thoughtfully on a slice of milk-soaked banana. "He won't think you've abandoned him just because you've moved out," he said reassuringly. "Even if he has got loads of toys already I'm sure he'd love to get a new one from his big sister."

Rose gave a small smile, but the look on her face showed she still wasn't content to settle for just getting her brother a toy. "It's not just about showing him I've not forgotten him, Doctor," she said, beginning to pour the tea, "Now that you're here I want to get him something really different."

"Why's that?" the Doctor asked, wondering how he'd affected things.

Rose turned to look at him, but he saw her blush ever so slightly, as if she shy about telling him. "Well, back when it was his first Christmas and I was here without you, I made him a mobile to hang above his cot," Rose explained, "It had all these planets that we'd visited on it, and when it was my turn to put him to sleep I'd point to the planets and tell him stories about you and me and all the things we'd done there." She paused for a moment as she noticed the way he was looking at her, and felt a surge of warmth spread over her at his adoring expression. A wide smile appeared on her face as she continued. "And I promised him that I was going to find a way to get back to you, and that one day he'd be able to meet you and find out how wonderful you are for himself," she said, still smiling as she turned back to the tea. "And now you're here and he got to meet you, like I promised. So I thought maybe we should get him a present together, something really special that can live up to all the stories I told him about you. But I've been pretty useless at coming up with anything and you're more of an expert in special than me, so any ideas?"

She didn't get a reply straight away, and as she turned round with the mugs of tea in her hands she noticed the Doctor had paused with a spoonful of banana half way to his mouth and was staring vacantly into space. Rose sighed, wondering how he'd managed to go so quickly from having his attention completely fixed on her to not even realising she was talking, but she found he'd been doing that quite a lot lately. It seemed like something was distracting him. "Doctor?" she prompted, setting the teas down on the table.

"What?" he said, suddenly snapping back to reality, "Oh, sorry. Wasn't listening then. What was that last bit?"

Rose sighed, deciding the conversation about Tony's present could wait. "You were doing that absent thing again, where you sort of just glaze over and it's like you aren't even there for a few seconds. You've been doing that a lot recently."

He looked surprised. "Have I? I hadn't noticed."

She frowned slightly, looking at him in concern. "Yeah, you have. Are you sure everything's alright?"

He gave a sigh and set the spoonful of banana back down in the bowl before resting his arms on the table. "Yeah, everything's fine," he said, although he was avoiding her gaze, "I just…I've been getting a few odd dreams lately, that's all. I had a particularly weird one last night."

Rose continued to look at him, and eventually he met her gaze. "What kind of dream?" she asked.

"Well, I was on a beach…" he began, and then noticing the discomfort in her expression added, "But it wasn't _that _beach, it was somewhere else, somewhere near a castle. And there was this man…" he trailed off again and leaned back in his chair. "But I'm sure it's nothing. It's Christmas, isn't it? Everyone gets weird dreams at Christmas."

She looked even more concerned once he'd said that. "Doctor, I know you've not done Christmas as a human before, but that's not how it works."

He looked puzzled. "Isn't it? But I remember someone saying…" An image came into his head of an old man – Wilf, that was him – telling him how everybody had been having bad dreams. But wait…no, that hadn't happened, had it? It was all very confusing. The more he tried to remember it the more it felt like a dream itself.

He noticed Rose was still looking worried and he shook his head. "Ignore me, I'm probably just reading too much into it when really it's nothing. I'm still not used to having dreams, they're all a bit weird to me."

She smiled again once he'd said that. "Yeah, dreams are like that, but don't worry, you'll get used to the odd ways in which the human brain works. Anyway, Tony's present," she said, steering him back to the topic they'd been discussing earlier.

"Ah, yes, of course," he said, eating another spoonful of banana. "Well, you're right, it does need to be special. If you've told him so much about me then I can't disappoint him," he said mischievously. "I suppose if I got hold of a few bits and pieces of gadgetry I could try and make him a toy sonic screwdriver or something. It wouldn't be as good as the proper one I made, but I'm sure he could have some fun with it."

Rose shook her head and gave a slight chuckle. "Doctor, I know you're trying to think of something a bit different, but can you imagine what kind of chaos a toddler would cause with one of those?"

"Um, good point," the Doctor conceded, grinning as he tried to imagine Tony using the sonic screwdriver to get all his other toys to play havoc. It would be chaos indeed, and probably not something Jackie and Pete would thank him for. "Well then, let's see what else we can think of," he said as the pair of them quickly forgot all about the Doctor's strange dreams and went back to the previous conversation.

Neither of them were looking out of the window to see the strange Elizabethan style ship that was drifting almost ghost-like along the Thames. If they had been looking, they might have seen its Captain standing at the wheel and staring in their direction with a sinister smile on his face.


	4. Les Invisibles

**A/N: Another dream of Imaginos this chapter so it's likely to be a little confusing, but I do have something planned in future to explain things a bit more. Perhaps the Baron whose castle the Captain laid siege to might want revenge? And maybe that will mean teaming up with the Doctor?****  
><strong>

_**Chapter Three – Les Invisibles  
><strong>_

The Doctor found himself standing at the end of a road, looking ahead to where the castle stood in front of him. In front of the castle gates stood the Captain, with his cane tucked under his arm and still smiling as mysteriously as ever. The Doctor watched him cautiously, but the top-hatted man didn't speak. Suddenly, the Doctor found himself standing alongside the Captain just outside the castle entrance, but he wasn't aware of having ever moved. How had that happened? This couldn't possibly be real.

The Doctor stared at the Captain, trying to work out what was going on. "This is a dream."

"All history is a dream," the Captain replied cryptically, "And you know your history well."

"Better than anybody," the Doctor said, trying to work out what on earth he meant by that.

The Captain just smirked at him before turning to lead the way inside. The Doctor hesitated for a moment, slightly wary of trusting this mysterious man who called himself the Captain, but then decided that since this was all a dream anyway he may as well follow.

They walked across the entrance hall towards a tall wooden door, which the Captain pushed open to allow the Doctor through. "I'm glad you came, Doctor," the Captain said as the Doctor stepped through into what he now saw was a large ballroom. The room was packed with people, some of them dancing and some of them talking, and the Doctor could hear the sound of a band playing a waltz, even though he couldn't see them. He watched the dancers for a few moments and he thought he recognised the steps. The Doctor looked up at the Captain. "I know this dance; it's the Foxtrot of Rassilon."

The Captain grinned at him. "Perhaps you ought to dance then. I know a girl who'll spin for you."

The Doctor considered that for a moment, trying to make sense of the Captain's odd use of language, and then shook his head. Although he was tempted to take part in the Time Lord Waltz, he was more interested in finding out why he was here. "Who are these people?" he asked, gesturing at the dancers around them. Although he hadn't noticed it before, as he looked round at the other people in the room he got the awkward sense that they were watching him. As his gaze fell on each of them it seemed horribly like they had just looked away and would go back to watching him again as soon as his back was turned.

"Astrologers, mostly," the Captain replied, "And a few old sea dogs and rockers I invited. Most of them were guests at the party of 1893. Oh, Doctor, I wish you could have been here for that one." A strange look had come into the Captain's black eyes and he said that final sentence almost wistfully.

The Doctor looked at him in confusion, not even trying to make sense of how all these people could have been at a party over a hundred years ago. Time travel was familiar to him, but this castle and the strange party guests weren't. "Why? What happened in 1893?" he asked.

"I can show you," the Captain replied, leading him towards a door on the opposite side of the room. The Doctor followed, carefully weaving his way in and out of the guests who seemed to be paying no attention to him, but yet he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched.

"It's in the North Tower," the Captain said as they reached the door, and the Doctor was about to ask what was in the North Tower when he turned to glance back into the room and froze. All of the other guests were indeed watching him. The dancers had stopped and instead had turned to face him, all eyes in the room resting on the Doctor and seeming to glow with a fiery intensity.

The Doctor took a step back, and then glanced towards the Captain as he heard him say, "It's this way." When he looked back into the room again everyone had gone back to dancing and talking, as if nothing had ever happened.

Feeling unnerved, the Doctor turned to follow the Captain away from the room. They walked through the corridors of the castle and up several flights of stairs, almost as if they were navigating a maze before they finally reached a door at the top of a tower. "Through here," the Captain said, opening the door and stepping inside. The Doctor followed him through and looked round cautiously at the room he now found himself in while the Captain shut the door behind him.

The room appeared to be an observatory of some sort, and as he looked around the Doctor could see various pieces of astronomical equipment and horary charts covering every shelf and table in the room. Looking over to the window where the Captain had now crossed to, the Doctor could see a black telescope mounted on a stand and pointing up towards the sky. The Captain stood beside the telescope and gazed out of the window at the stars. "You see them, Doctor?" he asked as he fixed his eyes on a point high above him, "There, they're pointing towards the north."

The Doctor crossed to the window to join him and looked up. For the first time he thought he understood what the Captain meant. As he stared upwards he could see seven points of light standing out against the velvet blue of the night sky: the constellation of Ursa Major. The Doctor knew his stars. He knew the names of the two on the outer edge of the constellation: Dubhe and Merak, and when the imaginary line between them was extended upwards it did indeed point to Polaris, the North Star. But what was the relevance of it? "Why are you showing me this?" the Doctor asked as he looked out, still suspicious and confused.

He heard the Captain laugh from somewhere in the room behind him while he continued to stare outwards. "I'm not," the Captain said, "Look down."

The Doctor did as he was asked and looked down towards the beach above which the castle was built. At first he couldn't really see anything, but then he thought he could make out the shape of somebody lying on the sand. The man was lying close to the water's edge and was completely still, as if he'd been washed up on the shore.

Turning back to the Captain, the Doctor felt a sudden sense of urgency as he realised what was wrong. "There's somebody down there."

The Captain just nodded quite calmly. "Yes, there is."

Frustrated with the Captain's seeming indifference the Doctor suddenly snapped at him, "Well, he's in trouble. Aren't you going to help him?"

"I am doing," the Captain said, still smiling.

Utterly confused, the Doctor turned to look back down at the man lying on the beach. "But what…who is he?" he asked.

The answer came from frighteningly close by as he heard the Captain speak right beside his ear. "Just imagine he was me," the Captain said, his tone menacing, and before he had chance to react the Doctor felt the Captain grab hold of him from behind and drag him back into the observatory. The Doctor tried to struggle, but the Captain was surprisingly strong and he found himself being pushed up against a wall and his right hand being twisted painfully behind his back. Then he heard something click and the Captain backed away from him, his expression completely blank.

As he tried to move the Doctor realised he'd been handcuffed to something attached to the wall, and as he watched the Captain turn away from him to cross to the other side of the room he started to feel afraid. Just because this was a dream it didn't mean it felt any less real.

Upon the opposite wall the Doctor could see that something had been hung there, but it was draped in a white cloth that concealed exactly what it was. He watched as the Captain walked up beside it and then turned back to look at him. "Would you like me to tell you now exactly why you are here, Doctor?" the Captain said with a smirk.

The Doctor glared at him. "Yes, I'd rather like to know that and why it is you've chained me to the wall," he responded angrily.

The Captain just continued to smirk. "And I should like to tell you," he said, raising a hand to clutch at the cloth draped over whatever was hung on the wall, "But first, I think I'll show you this." He pulled away the cloth and the Doctor found himself staring at his own reflection as a mirror was revealed behind it. It didn't seem to be just a normal mirror though; there was something distinctly odd and _wrong _about it. The image reflected in it seemed strangely dark, and the Doctor realised that it was made of obsidian, not glass. But he couldn't for the life of him work out what it was for.

With a growing sense of foreboding the Doctor realised that the Captain was smiling. "This is what I found in 1893," the Captain explained, "After years of sailing round Europe and the Americas, losing so many ships and searching through the jungle we finally found it. This mirror, which looks into another world."

The Doctor glanced nervously from the Captain to his own reflection and then back again. "Another world? I can sort of make sense of that. If it's a mirror that exists along a temporal rift then different dimensions can exist either side of its reflection. But if that's the case then why? What's it for?" He wasn't quite able to keep the fear out of his voice, a fact that the Captain seemed to notice. He didn't answer immediately, but instead just stared at the Doctor for a few seconds.

After a few moments of silence he spoke again. "Are you frightened, Doctor?" the Captain asked, almost mockingly.

The Doctor glared back at him, trying to act as confident as possible. "Why would I be? This is only a dream, it's not real."

The Captain smirked at him again as he took a few steps closer to him. "But fright is real, and so am I," he said in a sinister tone, holding the Doctor's gaze for a few moments before turning away again to walk back to the mirror. "You want to know who the man on the beach was?" he asked, looking back at the Doctor who gave a rather nervous nod. "Well," the Captain began to explain, "He was me. Me of a different time, in a different world. You see, Doctor, I drowned. My ship was caught in a storm and my friends left me to die."

He stopped talking after that and the pair of them simply stared at each other for a few seconds, the Doctor desperately trying to work out what was going on. "So, you were a sailor? A sea captain? Alright, I think I understand that, but what happened? How are you still here?"

The Captain still had his sinister smile in place. "I was brought back to life," he said simply.

The Doctor just stared at him, failing to understand any of it. "How? By who?"

"Oh, we'll get to the how in time," the Captain replied, "But as to who by, you've already seen them. They were the first thing you looked at when you went to the window."

The Doctor looked puzzled for a few seconds, and then slowly realisation dawned on him. "The Seven Kings."

"As they're sometimes known by," the Captain responded with a nod, "Or the Invisible Ones. I'm sure a man with as much knowledge and intellectual capacity as you can work it out."

The Doctor remained silent for a few more moments, getting more nervous the more he thought he understood. "The Seven Stars of Ursa Major," he said, talking more to himself than to the Captain as he tried to make sense of things, "Known among some ancient cultures as the Seven Kings, believed by the Aztecs to represent Tezcatlipoca, their god of slaves. But there's more to it than just the beliefs of ancient cultures, isn't there?"

He looked to the Captain for confirmation, but the Captain remained silent, waiting for him to work things out. The Doctor continued. "There's a temporal rift running through the universe that connects those stars with each other and with Earth. Different dimensions – different _worlds _– all overlap, and if there was something on the other side of the rift, something powerful…" He trailed off as he finally began to comprehend what this meant, and he saw the Captain give a satisfied nod.

"They are Old Gods, Doctor, the kind your people tell fairy tales about."

The Doctor just shook his head in disbelief. "The Time Lords would have known for sure if there was something that powerful lurking behind Ursa Major, you couldn't have kept it hidden. I would have known."

"Oh, but perhaps you _did _know," the Captain said, giving a sinister sounding chuckle, "Come on, Doctor, think back to your previous incarnations and your past lives, back to Gallifrey and the nursery rhymes they told you there."

The Doctor tried to think, but all he could do was stare at the Captain in utter confusion. The Captain, noticing his bewilderment, gave a sigh, "Oh come on, Doctor, they have over a hundred names and you must know at least one of them. I'm sure you can remember," he said, wandering over to the window again and beginning to sing softly to himself. "_Zagreus at the end of days, Zagreus lies all other ways, Zagreus comes when time's a maze, and all of history's weeping._"

"Stop it," the Doctor shouted at him as he recognised the rhyme, "Stop it!"

"Why, Doctor?" the Captain said tormentingly as he turned back to face him, "Is this not a nursery rhyme of your people? Or am I singing a song nobody knew? And what about the warnings from your nurseries where the women kept the looms? _Frost in the fire and the rocking chair, Frost in the hearth, frost in the ladle, Children's voices in the air, Wind that rocks the empty cradle_."

The Doctor was growing more scared than ever. How did the Captain _know _these rhymes? They were ancient rhymes from Gallifrey, but Gallifrey had been long destroyed and this man couldn't possibly be from there. So how did he know of them?

Seeing the Doctor's look of fear the Captain laughed. "So perhaps you _do _know of them," he sneered, "They're behind the clock, back there, you know, at the place where the four winds blow."

The Doctor noticed he was speaking in rhyme again, but he was too stunned and scared to comment on it.

"They're the ones who brought me back to life," the Captain stated, his expression more sinister than ever. "They came to me on that shore and brought me back from the dead."

Nervously, the Doctor held his gaze and tried to speak again. "How?"

The reply when it came was simple, but was also somehow the most menacing thing the Captain had said so far. "They used you."

The Doctor swallowed nervously, hoping he was going to wake up soon. "And what does that mean?"

The Captain's menacing smile didn't falter. "Time's a funny thing, isn't it? Things never happen in the right order. Your people have a way of cheating death that they needed for me to cheat it too, and that makes me the lucky one that you'll be regenerating soon."

That didn't sound good, and not because of the awkward half-rhyme. "But I can't regenerate, I'm not a full Time Lord!" the Doctor shouted at him, pulling against the bonds that kept him chained to the wall. He had a feeling something really bad was about to happen and if this actually was a nightmare then he desperately wanted to wake up now.

"I know you're not," the Captain said, moving to stand beside the mirror again, "But the real you is, and he will regenerate. As his duplicate you will reflect everything that happens to him, and where we are now the bridge between worlds is only paper-thin. It's thin enough to allow regeneration energy to spill through, and that's why I have the mirror. I can use it to recapture all the regeneration energy you reflect, and they will use it to bring me back to life."

"But…what…" the Doctor stared at him in a mixture of fear and confusion. "But if you take _all _the regeneration energy for you, then what happens to me?"

The Captain shrugged, as if he really couldn't care less about the answer. "Then you'll die."

Fear was beginning to grip the Doctor like the iron manacle currently around his wrist: strong and inescapable. What would happen to Rose if he died? He didn't want to leave her again. The fact that this was all supposed to be a dream wasn't making him any less scared. "But you can't do that! I've only got one life, you don't…how do you even know if this is going to work?"

"Because it already has done," the Captain said simply. "I told you, things never happen in the right order. Les Mesteres have already brought me back to life, and now they're using me to ensure that what they did to bring me back to life actually takes place. It's a brilliant paradox really, isn't it?"

The Doctor shook his head violently, trying to wake himself up. He'd long since worked out that this wasn't an ordinary dream, but he was still desperately hoping that somehow he could force himself to wake up. "Then where are they?" he shouted as loudly as possible, "Where are _Les Mesteres? _What exactly is it that they're doing?"

"They've gone a-drumming," the Captain replied with a smirk, "Paying a visit to another world, one I think you're familiar with."

The Doctor was about to ask what on earth that meant, but the Captain had taken a few steps forward towards one of the tables in the room, and whatever the Doctor had been about to say was silenced as the Captain began to tap out a rhythm on the tabletop with his fingertips.

_Ta-ta-ta-ta_

He didn't repeat it, just tapped out the pattern of four beats once, but it was enough to scare the Doctor into silence as he realised what it meant.

The Captain smirked at him. "They've gone to find your Master," he said, his voice dripping with menace.

_Koschei…_ "He's not _my_ Master," the Doctor replied, trying to sound calm but his voice still shook slightly.

The Captain laughed. "You're right, he's a _monster._" He began to tap out the rhythm again and the Doctor looked behind him to see the black mirror had begun to glow faintly yellow. In it he could see his own reflection for a moment, but then that faded and was replaced by another face that was all too familiar to him. The Master.

He could hear a voice inside his head. A grand, powerful voice that speaking to somebody, but he only caught a fragment of the sentence. _"The heartbeat of a Time Lord…"_

_But I'm not a Time Lord, _the Doctor thought desperately, _I've only got one heart. It isn't me this is happening to, it's him in the other world…_

Even as that thought went through his mind he suddenly realised that the Captain wasn't tapping out the full rhythm of drumbeats any more. He was only tapping out two, but the Doctor's heartbeat seemed to be filling in the blanks and its pace was getting faster.

He heard the voice again. _"A signal transmitted back through time…"_

He knew that voice, but it couldn't be possible.

_"A Whitepoint star…"_

Rassilon.

He barely had time to comprehend it before the Captain's voice cut across the one in his head. "But the star was only an illusion wasn't it?" He laughed again, almost manically this time."They're trying to return, Doctor!" A drastic change had come over his voice as he said that last sentence. He sounded hoarse and almost inhuman, and when he spoke it was as if there were several - _seven - _voices all speaking at once.

"But they can't!" the Doctor shouted, completely gripped by panic now as he realised what the Captain meant, "Not without destroying the universe. I trapped them in the Time Lock!"

Again the Captain laughed. Seven voices, all laughing at him. "Yes, you trapped them, just like they trapped us," the Captain snarled, speaking with the voices of Les Mesteres. "They thought of us as too strong, too great a rivals, so they imprisoned us within the rift for millions of years. We were buried in a maze of infinity, deep inside a city hidden in the stars so that our power was prevented from ever reaching Gallifrey. It was Rassilon's secret, he tried to hide that we ever existed. He thought us too dangerous for any but the oldest and highest of Time Lords to know that we were real, and so tried to pretend that we were merely a myth. But even when we were confined and almost forgotten we were not gone, Doctor. Our power could still reach as far as Earth. We appointed our agent here as an actor in history, to bend time to flow to our will. And we had him search for a way to bring us back."

The Doctor had met the Captain's gaze and found he was unable to look away. Those dark eyes with their two green rings...it was almost like they were black holes, sucking him in beyond their emerald event horizon.

Les Mesteres were still laughing. "And then came you. You banished the Time Lords to the Time Lock, confining them to a single point in time and space like they had once done to us. You were the answer and we knew that we could use you. We offered Imaginos a choice: to be free from us and die, or to take your life instead and continue to serve us. He chose to live. A good choice we believe, Doctor, because despite your many similarities, we doubt you would have served us as well as he has."

_Imaginos? That must be the Captain's name. _That was one thing the Doctor had managed to work out but he didn't really care. He was still fighting against the chain that was binding him to the wall, desperate for a way to get out. Surely it was time for him to wake up now. Please let all this have been just a bad dream and let him wake up.

"And now they are trying to return," the Captain continued in his seven voices, all the while tapping out the beat of four on the table, "But it shall be you who stops them, and here, in the presence of another world the knowledge will come to you: you'll be the one to bring us back."

"But why?" the Doctor yelled at them, unable to understand and even less able to escape, "What happens when you come back?"

The Captain just laughed, and the seven voices seemed to fade away to just one again. "But perhaps you can guess?" he said to the Doctor, sounding just as manic as before even though the Doctor still had no idea what he meant. "You can't see the Invisible Ones but you can hear them drumming!"

The moment he'd said that the next four beats sounded louder than ever, and the Doctor realised they were knocks falling on the door of the observatory. Who was out there? Had someone come to help him?

"Looks like River's found the door to the Mirror!" the Captain shouted.

River…he knew River. He'd only ever met her once but she'd died for him then. Could it be that she'd come to help him now?

The scrap of hope he'd felt was crushed as a different voice broke into his mind.

_"He will knock four times…"_

That couldn't mean…was it too late?

He found he staring into the Mirror as was unable to look away, even as it began to glow brighter and the images in it continued to change. He saw his reflection again, except that it wasn't his reflection. It may be his face, but it wasn't _him._

It was the other him, standing inside the Tardis in the other world, and glowing with the same light that was spilling from the Mirror.

He heard a voice in his head again, but this time it was his own voice.

_I don't want to go._

He barely had time to register the silence as the drumming stopped before the world exploded in a sea of yellow light.

**A/N: I'm sorry, I know I said I'd try and explain it more, but I probably just alienated most readers more than ever. I used so many song references in this chapter that if I were to go through and explain them one by one the explanation would probably be longer than the chapter itself. I will however point out the connection between the Old Gallifreyan nursery rhyme and the song I Am The One You Warned Me Of. The lyric **_**'And frost warnings from the women's farm' **_**had always struck me as being one of the weirdest parts of the **_**Imaginos **_**album, but after researching Gallifreyan history a bit more and finding that Time Lords are born from looms and that rhyme was a nursery versery sung to loomlings, I thought that lyric actually made a lot more sense when applied in this context.**

**Also, the lyric from In The Presence Of Another World – **_**'Your Master, he's a monster, he will come on a bridge of paper inscribed with a hundred names of God'**_** – is something I've tried to allude to many times in this chapter, with Zagreus being a god from Gallifreyan mythology that I've used as a name for the personification of Les Invisibles.**

**It's entirely coincidence that the song makes reference to a master and there is a character called The Master in Doctor Who. I just think it's another great way in which the two worlds fit together.**

**Other songs referenced this chapter: The Girl That Love Made Blind, Magna Of Illusion, The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria, I Am The One You Warned Me Of, Imaginos, Del Rio's Song, Blue Oyster Cult, Astronomy, Workshop Of The Telescopes, In The Presence Of Another World, Shooting Shark, Les Invisibles (and possibly some more that I've forgotten I included.)**

**I think I'm likely to take a break from writing this fic now while I concentrate on writing some other stuff. I very much want to continue writing this, but I only have a vague idea of which direction to take the plot in at the moment, and although I know I want a lot more Eleventh Doctor in it I need to figure out how I'm going to make things work. I'll come back to this once I've planned things out a bit more.**

**If anyone is still reading it at this point then huge HUGE thanks to you because I know this must have been pretty hard work if you aren't familiar with **_**Imaginos. **_**And if you are familiar with **_**Imaginos, **_**massive thanks to you too because it's so rare I come across anybody who shares my love of both Blue Öyster Cult and Doctor Who. If you liked **_**Imaginos **_**before reading this then I must say you have great taste in music, and if you haven't listened to it before then I **_**really **_**recommend it.**

**So **_**ladies, fish and gentlemen**_**, whether or not you've been following it so far let's just say that **_**we understand, and so do I, **_**and I'll leave you with that one final allusion until the next update.**

**Update 9/1/14: So, it's been a while. Over two years, in fact, and I've been looking over my old stories and deciding which ones I'll most likely still continue and which ones I won't. This one, although I didn't tell as much of the story I intended, I think I told enough of to mark it as complete, assuming I decide to leave it as an ambiguous ending. There's an obvious interpretation consistent with the Imaginos myth, where Les Mesteres' plan succeeds, and there's also the possibility that Imaginos' scheming with River and visits to a parallel world bring about a different outcome, which was the original intent of this story although I'm cutting it short. Such is the nature of the random access myth that its true meaning is meant to be ambiguous, and the tale is not meant to be told in a linear fashion. I recognise that not many people will have read this story, fewer still who read it and understood it, and consequently there will be a very small number of people who cared to see an update. However, should you in fact be one of the select few who wished to read another chapter, I apologise that there won't be one, and I hope that I've provided enough for you to imagine the multiple interpretations of the story for yourself, as the original album did. I do wish I could tell this story in full as I originally planned, but I've left it dormant for a very long time and I'm having to prioritise my more recent fics, because I have more WIPs than I can keep up with. Therefore, please consider this the end (of this part of the story, at least) that I hope at least stays true to the nature of Imaginos in being ambiguous and mysterious, if frustratingly cryptic. If you have read this far, then thank you. Thank you so much for being kind enough to invest your time in one of my more obscure and unusual ventures into fanfiction, and I do apologise that I can't offer any more of this particular tale of an adventurer in time and space.**


End file.
